


Shades of Grey

by lyriumghosts



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Bounty Hunter Jyn Erso, Canon compliant-ish, Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso - Freeform, Cassijyn, F/M, Rebelcaptain - Freeform, jyssian, merry christmas guys!, more jyn-centric then rebelcaptain but it's still there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 04:55:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9056200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyriumghosts/pseuds/lyriumghosts
Summary: For Jyn Erso, neither the Rebellion nor the Empire is truly good or evil. For her, she’d rather look at the ground than the sky.





	

**Author's Note:**

> so i promised my followers on tumblr id make a bounty hunter au for jyn and i did! however this turned out to be more jyn-centric then just rebelcaptain but i still think it's fitting. merry christmas guys!

When Jyn Erso kills her target, she feels vacant. 

 

Not the empty, psychopathic feeling of experiencing  _ nothing  _ \-- but after seeing the blast jet past her rifle, she feels like what’s left of her morality chips away. She feels hollow. Guilty. She closes her eyes and counts to ten, trying not to whisper too loudly in fear her hiding place will be revealed. A childish thought, really. She always picks the most secure, remote hideouts when preparing to kill her target -- she strategizes and mulls over it for hours, counting all the odds, guessing the probabilities, putting herself in the target’s mind. She never gets caught. She is always safe where she is -- whether it be a dimly-lit trench or under heap of forest undergrowth. 

 

She is safe for a while before their family members start screaming or the swamp monsters start howling. And after her briefest moments of peace, she slips away from the chaos, running through a veil of night or a cloud of sky-touching trees. She breathes in and out. She counts to ten. She tries to stop the screams erupting from her mouth, forcing down the sobs, and hope that nobody hears her hammering heart. 

 

She doesn’t collect heads. She’s very strict about this -- it’s too messy, too complicated. She’s an infamous bounty hunter as well -- she changes her name each time, but everyone in the galaxy knows her as The Rogue. A menacing name, but it fits. It causes fear, shivers trembling down the spines of children sleeping in their beds. Clients, at first, are reluctant to pay her without proof. But when they learn who she is they sweat and nod, because  _ The Rogue  _ never fails.  _ The Rogue  _ always keeps its promises.

 

Sometimes she goes through a sort of identity crisis, wondering if she really is the cruel killer that everyone thinks her to be -- or is she Jyn Erso, the orphan daughter of Galen Erso, the Imperial engineer that is despised and loved? Is she still the innocent girl who watched her mother die in front of her, or is she a brave fighter? She likes to think she has some morals. She only accepts targets who deserve it (in her books at least). Lousy scoundrels, cheaters, Imperials, muggers -- anyone who is dirty and has lived too long in luxury. 

 

Was it wrong to feel the slightest bit of victory seep into her when she killed those kinds of people? After all, they were only the scummiest kind of people. An abusive father that spent all his money betting on sabacc games; a serial killer that slaughtered children in their sleep; an underground human trafficker. They deserved it. She always told herself that as she ran away.

 

Was she really that different from them, though? She killed people. Many of her targets were murderers. She was nothing but a hypocrite -- no better than any of them. 

 

But she always moved on from these thoughts, as much as they invaded her mind. She wasn’t good or bad. She was right in the middle of the black and white spectrum -- the greyest grey. She didn’t care for freeing the universe or enslaving anyone in it. As long as she survived she was content with that. 

 

Philosophy was for the privileged. For those could afford to live in luxury.

 

* * *

 

It’s during a mission in Jakku when she is caught. 

 

Her target was Rajul Mulaththam -- a man who roamed the deserts of the junkyard planet who cheated the residents out of their deals and apparently murdered many of the traders there if they did not agree. He wore a mask of emerald and dressed in the finest black silks, and his smile was alluring and charming, but his eyes were full of loathing and fire. 

 

Jyn’s client is shady at best -- preferring to wear a mask themself, their voice muffled by the scarves wrapped around their neck. The voice is thick and muted. She doesn’t trust them, but then again, she doesn’t trust anyone but herself. 

 

“You’ll find him in a desert bazaar around here,” the stranger says, and her comlink buzzes with the coordinates the masked figure sent her. She briefly glances at the numbers at the corner of her mind, calculating to see if they were legitimate, but never taking her stare off the stranger. Testing them.

 

They nervously fidget under her gaze. Nervous. Uncomfortable. The unnoticeable scent of sweat. 

 

“You’re not telling me something,” Jyn states, her voice cold and emotionless. She had perfected her vocal cords to never waver, to sound calm and monotone. She was sitting in the shadows of the stranger’s ship, her face covered by a hood. But it wasn’t out of cowardice -- she needed it in order to stay hidden. To not be seen. To avoid the most miniscule chance of being sold into slavery or a token for the Rebellion. She feared her free will being taken away, torn apart. It wasn’t paranoia. It was a precaution. She changed her voice too sometimes -- she could never afford a voice changer, they were rare, and even if they were on sale the seller was too shady and the price too inflated. Sometimes her accent was completely gone, other times a raspy whisper. 

 

Her identity always different. The person behind the mask -- she wasn’t so sure if it was the same every time.

 

The client audibly gulps, turning away for a second to scratch their head. Their feet jitters and trembles. 

 

After a suspiciously long amount of time, the client finally clears their throat and says, “You can trust me. I’ll pay you a lot. 100,000 credits. As soon as you kill him, all in one payment.”

 

Jyn tries to twist her face in one of her ever-placid calm expressions, but it’s agonizing not to gasp and stare with widened eyes at the client. One hundred thousand could finally buy her own ship -- and buy the person’s silence as well. One hundred thousand could buy all the luxuries and weapons she had always wanted -- a DLT-19 Heavy Blaster Rifle instead of her crappy knock-off rifle she stole from a twi'lek several years ago. Suspicion rolls off the client like a heat wave, but the payout is too large to ignore. 

 

She narrows her eyes. “Prove to me you have the money.”

 

The client scurries away in another room, then returns minutes later, wheezing as it carries a giant chest. 

 

It opens it, and inside hundreds of credit ingots swim inside, enticing Jyn to stand up and look closer. Making sure her face is still concealed, she carefully examines each ingot, glimmering it in the light to see if it’s counterfeit. Almost too quickly, she takes out her comlink and scans the ingots. 

 

They are all real. 

 

Trying to control her breathing, she turns away from the stranger and removes her blaster pistol from its holster. She can hear the client stepping back, and a whine echoes to her ears.

 

Smiling with satisfaction, she continues walking, and only when she is going down the ship’s chute does she say, “I’ll take the deal.”

 

As soon as she exits the chute, the hot, dry air of Jakku hits her like a wave and she breathes in the putrid scent of mechanical oil and steel. 

 

Miles away she makes out a tiny dot that appears to be a bazaar. Checking her coordinates, she fetches her comlink, and the areas match up. 

 

As she approaches the bazaar, she hides in the shadows, studying the garb of the buyers, she fishes for her knife in her bag, and starts making tears and cuts on her cloak, ripping away the fabric to appear casual. To blend in. 

 

Casually, she starts to take in interest in the products that are in display as people yell deals at her as she passes by -- beautiful dresses only her old self would ever consider wearing, priceless jewels, old mechanical parts on sale. She is nothing but another figure in the endless crowd. 

 

Every chance she gets she studies shoppers and sellers, never staring too long to avoid suspicion. People of all races are crowded around stands, even droids chat and walk around leisurely.  _ A man with an emerald mask. Finest black silks. A deceiving expression.  _

 

She lurks in the bazaar for hours, making sure never to visit the same stand twice. Her palms are sweating, gripping her knuckles tightly until they turn white. Just as she reconsiders leaving to go set up camp (she never trusts her client’s invitations to sleep in their place), a flash of green crawls at the edge of her vision, and she whips around to see her target. 

 

She is never scared by them -- her targets are always the same. Filthy pigs with too much money and hearts too cold to touch. Her usual procedure consists of mapping out their schedule for days, following them around, tracing their every moment and calculating the perfect time to lodge a laser in their head. 

 

But the man unconsciously sends a shiver down her spine. He gives off an aura of evil; ironic considering she doesn’t believe “evil” exists. But he is looming, menacing, the mask covering all of his face except his eyes and mouth. The client was right -- a trusting smile but betraying eyes. She turns course to make it so that she is behind him. She analyzes his head size, his body weight -- necessary components when sniping. She is too focused on the man to realize the two strangers trailing behind her. 

 

It’s when she senses two sets of eyes watching her that she is aware, and she turns around, readying her blade, but the two are faster -- they pull out blasters of their own, and the entire crowd screeches and disperses, and she’s caught up in the chaos as they run her over and she’s stampeded on. 

 

The feet trampling her like saw dust is the last thing she sees before she passes out.

 

* * *

 

Beeping sounds interrupt her sleep, and the first thing she sees is the glass of a bacta tank.

 

She struggles against the wires that prod her skin, trying to scream out, but the mask muffles her shouts. 

 

A wave of black unwillingly pulls her back to her slumber.

 

* * *

“Jyn Erso. Bounty hunter. Multiple cases of assault, forging of documents, stealing, causing disruption of peace, illegal gambling, and of course, murder,” Mon Mothma reads aloud from a list, as if she is pulling Jyn Erso down into a hole of guilt. 

 

The woman is wrong. Jyn has already hit rock bottom. 

 

She is in a sealed off room, lights buzzing from the ceiling, and two guards stand by the door, watching her every movement. Her hands are shackled by cuffs. 

 

At this point, she wouldn’t have attempted to escape. She is too tired to even move anymore.

 

Jyn stares down Mon Mothma, but she proves to be a good opponent, as she does not tense as her client did. Her client, who turned out to be a rebel planted to find her -- the daughter of Galen Erso. Engineer taken away by the Empire. They think because she’s his daughter that she can help somehow. Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. That’s the only reason these bratty freedom fighters want her anyway -- because she won’t make it anywhere else. 

 

She finally answers, “You make it seem like killing is heathenous. Tell me, Senator, are you suggesting that the Rebellion has never had to kill anyone?”

 

The Senator stiffens. Jyn smiles, knowing she has won. Mon Mothma says, “For our cause. We never kill needlessly. However, it was your choice to become a bounty hunter, Miss Erso.”

 

“I do not kill needlessly. I kill to survive. Besides, the people I’m killing are poisoning this galaxy anyway, so who would miss them?” she seethes, her breath hot as it fans against her face because of the fan in the room. 

 

“And I do not think of myself as good, Mon Mothma. Nor do I evil. In this galaxy there are only shades of grey,” she added, quieter this time. She averts her gaze from the senator, only staring at the table now.

 

The senator explains that because of her father she is critical to find out what the Empire is planning -- supposedly, a super weapon. This is her chance at redemption, they say. Because of her training with Saw Gerrera, and her skills as a bounty hunter, she is nonexpendable. 

 

A Captain will help her lead her first mission, they say. To find Saw Gerrera, who will lead her to her father. 

 

She grips her knuckles when she hears that name. Twice, too. She hasn’t thought about the man who trained her how to fight and then abandoned her in so long. And now she’s being forced to meet with him again.

 

She feels sick. This is too much. Too much to handle. This is exactly what she has feared -- what she had trained her entire life for. To not get caught. And now she has. 

 

At least it’s better than being an Imperial slave, she tells herself. At least she gets to fight for a cause that’s better than the Empire’s. But she still can’t force herself to believe this.

 

Captain Andor -- the one who would accompany her mission -- walks into the room. He studies her, and she studies him back, calculating. He’s decently attractive, a certain accent she hasn’t heard before when he speaks. But he gives off an aloof aura, yet sensitive.

 

She’s finally free from her shackles as she is guided to a ship. Captain Andor is completely silent. So is she.

 

When she enters the ship, a rather sassy droid starts blabbering on how there is a “high chance she will impede our mission” and to be exact, 65 percent. She chooses to ignore him.

 

Finding herself alone in the cabin, she starts to rummage through Captain Andor’s bag -- nothing personal, only the most necessary items for their mission. She grabs his blaster, tests its weight, and finds it quite like her own -- she guessed they had similar tastes. 

 

When Captain Andor returns, he eyes the blaster, but he doesn’t flinch or back away. Instead, he barely looks at it as the droid -- whose name turns out to be K2SO -- starts naming off the probabilities she will use the weapon against them. 

 

She pipes up, “Don’t worry. I think I’ve lost the will to kill at all.” She’s half-joking. 

 

Andor is quiet for a moment, and the door sealing off the cockpit from the main body of the ship automatically seals itself with a wheeze. All is quiet, and she finds him sitting next to her -- not too close that it’s suffocating, but close enough that she can feel the warmth radiating from his body. She doesn’t mind it. 

 

“I know being a bounty hunter might’ve taken a toll on you,” he finally says, his breath the only sound in the room. She gazes at him -- really looks at him, to see his face has turned stone cold, but not emotionless. 

 

She gets the aching feeling they share more than similar tastes for blasters, and she’s not sure if she likes it or not.

 

Andor finally finishes, “And I just wanted to say that being a Rebellion soldier? Especially if you say that you share the same morals as us -- it’s no different. I’ve done things I would have never done myself, but I did it for the cause of the rebellion. Telling myself everyday that all the killing would amount to  _ something _ , even if the hope seemed fragile and small. So you’re not alone.”

 

Jyn is taken aback by his words. But the fact that she has just met him doesn’t bother her for some reason. Because she feels like that maybe she does like sharing the same things as him after all. 

 

They sit in silence, but it isn’t awkward or consuming.

 

She finds herself saying, “Thank you . . .”

 

“Cassian,” he says, and he smiles. She finds her face growing warm, her heart skipping a beat. She quite likes his smile for a reason she can’t explain. 

 

“Thank you, Cassian. Maybe we can get through this together, then,” she whispers, and she knows he can hear her. 

 

K2SO rather annoyingly yells at Cassian to get back to the cockpit, and slowly, he stands up, and Jyn finds herself wanting him to stay. Looking at him, walking away, she almost wants to call to him, but she can’t muster the courage. 

 

Before he exits through the door, he turns and smiles again. “You’re welcome. Jyn.”

 

He vanishes behind the door, and Jyn Erso, the fierce and fearsome bounty hunter, finds herself blushing at the way Cassian Andor says her name -- rolling off the tongue just the right way. 

  
Maybe, just maybe, working for the Rebellion wouldn’t be so bad after all.

**Author's Note:**

> follow my tumblr/prompt me @luhansflower!


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